


The Rule of Names

by gardnerhill



Series: A Study In Crimson [6]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Gen, International Talk Like A Pirate Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talk Like a Pirate, Lesson 1: Your Pirate Name</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rule of Names

**Author's Note:**

> For JWP 2013 Prompt #12: **The naming of characters is a difficult matter.** For example, 'Sherlock' means 'fair-haired'; John means 'God is Gracious.' Either use one (or both) of these bits of trivia in your story, or include a character whose name means something appropriate to his/her part.
> 
> For those following the saga of [_A Study in Crimson_ ,](http://archiveofourown.org/series/19162) my pirate pastiche, this takes place early in the timeline of “Rache,” the sequel to “The Press-Gang,” after the chapter "A Parliament of Pirates."

“Shear-Lock is understandable enough,” I said, holding the rasp steady on my thigh and rubbing the teeth of my bonesaw ‘hand’ across it to straighten and sharpen them, “he takes the wigs from the captains he’s commandeered. And L’Estrade is pure brass, he might as well have called himself Captain Gallows. The Adder – I’ve heard enough about The Woman’s ways. But some names elude me. Why Angel?”

The bos’n expertly plied a needle on his shirt under the swinging yellow lamplight. “The name under which I was carried into Hell is Ndjele.” The Cameroonian name fell from his lips and tongue effortlessly - not something a white man could boast. It sounded enough like the English word “Angel” that the mystery was solved.

“Hell?” Wiggins piped up from beside me, where he held both my chiurgeon kit and my ledger (as my dogsbody, aiding me in both my roles as ship’s quartermaster and ship’s surgeon).

“The belly of a slave ship,” Angel said, and looked at Wiggins. “And then a sugar plantation in Barbados, where I learned the use of a machete.” The look in his dark eyes made my surgeon’s mate suddenly very occupied with straightening out my blades and scrapers and needles, head down and ears crimson. “God will call every black soul straight into Heaven, because we have already walked through Hell.”

“Which makes your English name very appropriate,” I said levelly, finishing the job by polishing up the steel teeth with a cloth. “Whetstone.” Wiggins handed it to me, and I used my saw-hand to hold the stone in place on my knee as I took up the first of my surgical knives to sharpen them.

Small darned a sock – from the size of it, for his ship-mate Tonga sleeping in the hammock beside him – his weatherworn wooden peg-leg jutting out before him with a few needles stuck into the top for his easy reach. “I still say Gold-Hand Jack would have made a better name for you, Doctor. There’s a thousand salts with ‘One-Hand’ as a name – hell, you’ve made a few of ‘em!”

Laughter in the foredeck from the other members of the _Baker_ ’s first watch engrossed in similar chores during their four-hour reprieve from their duties. Many were in their hammocks like Tonga for a few precious hours of sleep, but others like myself attended to self-maintenance. Hector carved an intricate chain out of a length of wood, practising his mastery of the tools required of a carpenter’s mate.

I continued to hone my surgical tools. “Gold-Hand implies wealth and generosity, Mr. Small. I’d be surrounded by tars with their own hands out, asking. One-Hand is good enough, and faster to say.” The steel blade was the valuable part of my appendage – but the beaten gold that covered the wooden base, and the five square-cut rubies embedded around the bottom where flesh met wood, were far more valuable to me as a gesture of esteem from the captain and crew, each of whom had given part of their own coins or gems to embellish my arm.

“After your work on the table, Dr. Jack, you could be called Blood-Hand.” Wiggins grinned, his teeth brown from smoking tobacco (he had the same noxious pipe-smoking habit as Captain Shear-Lock). “There’s a name would strike fear into any man you fought!”

More men laughed, but I returned to the work of preparing my tools in grim silence. Blood-hand might just become my name before Shear-Lock’s revenge on the _Octavius_ was done (we would reach Tobago within the week, and sought the _Gloriana_.) My bonesaw hand had been blooded, not by amputating a limb to save a shipmate’s life but by tearing out the throat of one of Milverton’s crew.

“What of you, Small?” Hector said, and I was relieved to turn my mind from such thoughts. “You’ve traded a timber for a timbertoe, but you’ve kept your old name. That’s one of my best pegs you’re wearing, I might add. You won’t be Pegleg, or One-Foot?”

“Tonga finds it devilish hard enough to speak English, without having to learn to call me a new name,” replied the man whose leg I’d amputated my first day with the Bakers. “My old name will just have to do.”

“It’s appropriate,” Angel said, grinning, before making everyone in the foredeck roar with laughter by saying, “both of you are Small.”

**Author's Note:**

> "L'estrade" is French for "the raised platform.”


End file.
